1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for extracting a desired scene from a moving image.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the appearance of a mass-capacity recording medium such as HDD and DVD, it is possible to shoot various scenes and save data of their moving images easily. However, it is not easy to search data of a large number of moving images or of prolonged moving images for a desired scene or to edit and compile such data. For example, to extract a scene in which a specific person appears, a user has to find the scene by using a slider etc. and specify a first frame and a last frame of the scene to be cut out. Such a task is difficult and time-consuming to do for a nonprofessional person. Therefore, there is a demand for technology to facilitate retrieval and editing of a moving image.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-99953 discloses a method of tracking a face in which a trial is made to detect a face at a predetermined frame interval until the face is detected, whereupon the face is tracked backward and forward along the time axis. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-299829 discloses a method in which an apparatus correlates information of characteristics of a scene including a zone of the scene, a key frame, a degree of importance, and feature values of an image of the key frame to data of a moving image.